I prepare trend reports for fortune 1000 companies.
I am paid to play
the disenfranchised against the disrespected
make the F1000 feel connected
to the cognosumers who reject them,
stuck in the cultural crosshairs.

I package the questions and organize the answers,
emailing the butcher, blackmailing the baker,
sharing the bone marrow with clandestine video game maker.

I tell them about funky black barbers in Memphis
using fire to cut hair.
Swedish teens bored to tears
soaking their tampons in vodka
to get juiced in school.
Crispin Glover joins the Wu Tang Clan
and nobody bothers to understand
but everybody says
dude that’s cool.

Pillsbury wants to update the dough boy and make butter ‘younger’,
stick that fucker with a fork and call your mother,
scrape the lard from the fat of the land
and leave it smoking in the pan.

And some guy in a conference room in Ohio says into his speakerphone:
“Tell me more about the Krautrock movement and the abstract bands.”
I spit out details to counteract,
and wipe my face with my cuff,
generating more fluff,
without concentrating on the end result,
just the next step which is an orchestrated effort to tap into tech step

to sidestep the fact that all packaged goods are the same,
only the name changes.
and the game rearranges and the world Wayne lives in
can be divided into stages, phases, trends, fads, and crazes.

Declare a war on a demographic,
paying top dollar for a guerilla campaign of street posters placed in prime places
where kids congregate and pedophiles masturbate to juvenile faces,
services provided by an eco-terrorist graffiti artist specializing in revitalizing heavy metal.
His brandalism spreads the viruses we peddle:
Kids in custom vans should crave candy and chemicals, rejecting morals and resting on their laurels,
making fun of Pauly Shore
as they get addicted to death and keep whoring for more.

And some guy in a conference room in Ohio will smile. “This is teen cool AND mom cool.”

What’s hot, what’s right, what’s not in the spotlight?
Hold a focus group and retool, train the pilots to tame the planes and get ready for a midair refuel.

Do kids really think black is the new brown?
or is platinum the new black?
Who do we assassinate, and what era is ripe for a comeback?

It makes increasingly less sense even to talk about a publishing industry, because the core problem publishing solves — the incredible difficulty, complexity, and expense of making something available to the public — has stopped being a problem

So the next time you hear an old dude banging the business model drum, or worse, the sounding the “monetization” bullhorn, let him know the 20th century was yesterday. Today’s challenge is building a better economy – not hawking the same old mass-produced, toxic, self-destructive junk slightly differently. Challenge him with this: you’ve got a business model. But do you have any ideals? Because without the latter, the former is worth about as much as Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, or Detroit.